New research from the UK suggests that living an active lifestyle can reduce people's genetic predisposition to obesity by about 40 per cent, challenging a popular view that exercise doesn't help people lose weight if they are genetically predisposed to obesity.

Through genomic analysis, researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have shown that the Ashkenazi Jewish population is genetically more diverse than people of European descent, despite previous assumptions that Ashkenazi Jews have been an isolated population. In addition, analyses of disease-related genes of higher prevalence in the Ashkenazi Jewish population indicate that only a minority of traits show signs of positive selection, suggesting that most have arisen through random genetic drift.

The majority of rare diseases are hereditary. But despite significant progress in genome research, in most cases their exact cause remains unclear.

Use of an experimental targeted drug to treat metastatic melanoma tumors with a specific genetic signature was successful in more than 80 percent of patients in a phase 1 clinical trial. Results of the trial of PLX4032, an inhibitor of a protein called BRAF that is overactive in more than half of all melanomas, appear in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Current antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have many side-effects, among others slowing down brain activity, which in turn reduces patients' ability to react. These side-effects could be eliminated if genes that counteract seizures could be introduced into the brain. Professor Merab Kokaia at Lund University in Sweden has obtained promising results in animal experiments.

New studies show that treatments targeting specific viral genes protected monkeys infected with deadly Ebola or Marburg viruses. Furthermore, the animals were protected even when therapeutics were administered one hour after exposure - suggesting the approach holds promise for treating accidental infections in laboratory or hospital settings.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association today heralds a landmark muscular dystrophy advance by an international study team of scientists and physicians from the Netherlands, United States, France and Spain. Led by MDA-grantee Silvère van der Maarel, Ph.D., at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, the collaborative study of more than 2,300 people found that two distinct genetic changes on chromosome 4 must be present to cause facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD).

The DNA genomes of organisms whose cells possess nuclei are packaged in a highly characteristic fashion.